Back at the house, Dixie and Pell had both gone to Market, leaving Lynnette with a baby-sitter who was in deep panic over tomorrow’s French test. I couldn’t help her with irregular verbs, but I could keep an eye on Lynnette.
“Lynnette’s barrette/ has come unset,” I teased, and refastened it so that the side wisps of her sandy blonde hair were held away from her face.
“Let’s go walk/ and talk/ and gawk,” she giggled, which sounded like something Pell would say.
So we took a walk around the block, stopping along the way to pet the neighbor’s friendly golden retriever and to speak to a haughty Persian cat, who condescended to let Lynnette stroke under her chin. We talked about the latest Disney movie, her first-grade teacher, and why boys always thought it was so funny to burp and break wind.
We came back through the kitchen for something to drink and commiserated with the baby-sitter, who was sure she was going to flunk and never get accepted to the college of her choice. In the living room, Lynnette briefly longed for her electronic games, “but Grandmama’s got some great games, too.”
I was amused to realize that Parcheesi, played with real dice on a three-dimensional board, was now a novelty. I beat her there, but she wiped me out in Mancala, easily capturing most of my stones even though she’s just turned seven and the instructions say that it’s for ages eight to adult.
When games palled, she offered to “read” to me from their family albums.
What Dixie’s aunt might have lacked in formal training, she more than compensated for with vivid thumbnail sketches. Dry genealogical charts suddenly popped to life when, in tiny meticulous letters, there appeared beside a name and date: “Always sang around the house.” “Gentled his first horse when 10-yr-old.” “Her quilts had 20 stitches to the inch.”
Now I’ve never broken a horse, but I have quilted on occasion and merely thinking of the patience it takes to make tiny, even stitches through lid, batting and lining was enough to make my fingers sore. I’m proud anytime I can consistently do six to the inch. Twenty? She would have been welcome round any quilting frame.
Lynnette’s favorites though were the bulky scrapbooks that held letters and physical mementos. “Here’s the last boll of cotton my great-grandfather picked before he went to work at the mill,” she said.
Stapled to the page was a lump of dirty gray cotton that still had its seeds caught in the lint. Next to it was a blue satin ribbon that Dixie had won in a spelling bee when she was eleven.
“And here’s David Henry,” said Lynnette, opening the flap of a yellowed envelope that was pasted to the page.
Inside was a tress of fair hair tied with a pale blue ribbon.
“David Henry went to look for gold out West and nobody ever heard from him again. He fell right off our family tree. See?”
She pointed to the words on the envelope and seemed to read them aloud although I couldn’t be sure if she was actually reading or parroting words that could have been read to her so often that she’d memorized them: “Gone from this family in 1853. His mother mourned for him until the day she died.”
There were marriage certificates, birth certificates, tintypes of stiff-faced Edwardians, a copy of what must have been Chan and Evelyn’s wedding picture.
Lynnette stared at it for such a long time that I said, “Do you remember her, honey?”
“She used to rock me on her lap,” Lynnette said, “and she always smelled good, but sometimes I can’t remember.” Her lips trembled and fat tears formed in her eyes. “I remember Daddy, though. I wish he didn’t die. I wish he didn’t!”
Sobs racked her thin body as she buried her head in my lap. I could only hug her and make wordless comforting noises until she fell asleep with her head still in my lap.
While she slept, I turned the pages in one of the photo albums. There were pictures of Dixie with Evelyn as a baby, as a toddler, first day of school, a first-grade picture and her own crooked, snaggletoothed smile. There were even a couple of pictures of Evelyn standing by the Old Well on the Chapel Hill campus, then Evelyn in a body cast after that car hit her. The background shifted to High Point and this house. Evelyn seemed to go from preadolescence to womanhood in the turn of a page. There was an eight-by-ten of her wedding picture, then another baby girl. The proud grandmother. The first birthday. The third birthday with Evelyn and Pell poised to help Lynnette blow out her candles.
I sat lost in thought for several long minutes, then glanced down at the sleeping child and smoothed her long thick braid.Since you were in your bassinet,Your family’s loved you, sweet Lynnette.
24
« ^ » “Long before the days of the first Pharaoh the Egyptians had carved couches, bedsteads of iron, and, it is believed, of bronze. Carpets were on the floors of the wealthy.”The Great Industries of the United States, 1872
As a district court judge, I don’t get a lot of jury trials, nor do I often get to pass judgments on civil matters where damages are more than ten thousand dollars. But this Monday was different
Sylvia Cone Westermann versus Kurkland’s Quality Carpet Cleaners in a civil action for negligence.
Mrs. Westermann’s attorney had filed to have the matter heard in district court because it was quicker than waiting for a date in superior court, and neither attorney moved to postpone when they learned I’d be hearing the case rather than Judge Dunlap, who was still out of town.
Mrs. Westermann was claiming that Kurkland’s had improperly cleaned her Turkoman rug and had, in the process, irreparably damaged it so as to render it unsalable. Previous to Kurkland’s cleaning said rug, its market value was placed at sixty thousand dollars. Current value? Two thousand.
Plaintiff was asking sixty thousand in damages and ten thousand in punitive damages for her pain and suffering. (Kurkland’s had impugned her two Lhasa Apsos.)
Jury selection can take weeks in a capital case and even selecting a civil jury can eat up more than a day if either of the parties is well known in the community. But none of the prospective jurors called knew either party and only one had ever experienced dissatisfaction with a carpet cleaner. I allowed that one to be dismissed for cause. No peremptory challenges were issued.
The jury was seated in less than an hour, which has to be some kind of record.
Mrs. Westermann was one of those permanently indignant women, compact and pugnacious. Her steel gray hair was fashionably clipped, and the pearl buttons on her navy silk suit matched her pearl choker and pearl drop earrings. She immediately took the stand and told her story. She had called Kurkland’s Quality Carpet Cleaners and asked for an estimate to clean her authentic, hand-loomed, seven-by-ten Turkoman rug that lay under her dining-room table on top of a rose Berber wall-to-wall.
She had been put through to Mr. Kurkland himself and, after some negotiation, they agreed upon a price for his services. Upon arrival at her home, Mr. Kurkland had noticed her two Lhasa Apsos and asked if there were any possibility that they could have soiled the rug.
“I told him absolutely not!” Mrs. Westermann testified. “My dogs are quite well trained and they are never allowed in the dining room. He wishes to blame them for his own incompetence.”
According to her testimony, Mr. Kurkland proceeded to lay a plastic sheet between the rug and the Berber carpet. The description of his cleaning process sounded careful enough to me. He had first tested for colorfastness, then handwashed the rug on his hands and knees, rinsing and toweling as he went. According to Mrs. Westermann, though, “he left it so wet, it took two days to dry and when it did dry, it was faded and splotched.”